The following is an unabridged letter I posted to a halfway house in Miami, intended to be read only by one very specific individual. I’m not sure if I will share his response or if I will ever receive one. I’m not even sure it reached him. I have since realised that it is inappropriate to write such a thing to a stranger and, even stranger yet, to go and share it with more strangers.

Still, I imagine that if this person were to google himself, he might come across a strange piece of writing on the internet addressed to him and be compelled to write back.

Hey Mickey,

I’d always wondered what type of woman writes to strange men in prison and then I became one. That’s always how it goes. You’re always wondering who the hell is throwing all those trollies into the waterways and then on a particularly rough night you find yourself dangling one over the edge of a bridge.

At the risk of appearing parasocial, I’d like to disclaim that this is the first time I've done this and unless you reply I don’t see myself making a habit of it. Writing you is not as easy as throwing a trolley off a bridge. I have less control over the outcome. I have no idea how you might read this and what you might think of me, especially now that I’ve mentioned trolley throwing so much (just a phase I promise).

We aren't equal, this whole thing is lop-sided. All you know about me is that from time to time I might have thrown trollies off bridges, but I know that your mum always calls you on the day you were conceived -not the day you were born- to celebrate your birthday. That date is the 29th of September.

To counteract this imbalance in power, I’d like to offer up some information about myself: I was born on the 29th of September in the year 2000. Take it or leave it.

Another weird thing about our dynamic is the freedom element. I can go outside into the night and walk barefoot on the warm tarmac or accept unsolicited advice from small children in the supermarket but you can’t do any of these things.

I don’t mean to complain but because of these reasons, writing this has been hard. It feels invasive. But then again, all journalism is so I should be used to that feeling. That is what I do for work sometimes; journalism. But lately nothing has gotten my heart rate up enough for me to write. I took up watching documentaries in an attempt to resuscitate my anaemic imagination and I guess it worked because I’m writing to you now about something you said nineteen years ago, in 2006.

I admire you Mickey, but not for the reasons most would. Personally, I think cocaine is the least impressive drug a person can do and I don’t want to know about the finesse, manoeuvres or routes you used to import a conservative 33 tonnes of it into Florida. I’m not saying this isn’t impressive and mystifying I’m just saying that I’m not writing to you with questions about operations or narcotics or that time you told Escobar he was stupid. That is not the driving curiosity I have in you and your story. I have perhaps a less appropriate interest. I want to know about the woman.

The woman, Mickey. You found her while you were a fugitive, I don’t know where. You mention her for no longer than thirty seconds in a two-hour documentary about your import/export business ventures. But thirty seconds was all I needed. My heart rate went up.

I’ve noticed how good you are at playing things down. You use sparing, scarce and casual words to describe very un-casual circumstances. You describe what happened on September 20th 1986 as a “small confrontation” but Mickey you used a flare gun and barrels of jet fuel to burn the plane bearing 500kg of cargo you were caught landing. You evaded an entire specialised unit of agents from Task Force CENTAC26 and went dark, remaining on the run for years. When asked about that, you explained in great detail, “I hit the swamp”.

This shows me that you are not one to exaggerate. You are a realist, perhaps even a stoic, and I can trust your word. Unlike mine, it is a reliable word, uncontaminated by metaphor. It is a word that is as sturdy, and efficient as your drug running. To the point, with all liabilities cut loose.

It is easy to read the love of the poets, but I take it all with a grain of salt. All warm-blooded creatures bend and stretch feelings. Listening to them has been nice but it has gotten me nowhere in life. Spiritually, I like the idea of restraint and I’ve been practicing it for years now. You seem to have championed it.

This is why, when for thirty seconds, you spoke with such unexpected tenderness and sensitivity about the encounter you had with the woman, it affected me. I took it very seriously.

You spoke of her after being asked what your life outside the law cost you. The first thing you mention is of course time,

“What I lost out of this thing was of course almost nine years… Do I regret anything? Sure. We messed up a lot of people. A lot of my friends because of the business we got into, lost a lot of time...”

You look into the mid-distance beyond the camera for a second and I’m sure I recognise that look in your eyes. You continue,

“I think the biggest thing I lost other than time is when I was a fugitive I met a really wonderful young woman. And because of this I lost her. I’ve never met anybody quite like her, maybe one day I’ll get lucky enough to find something again but I don’t know. That was what I missed the most...”

This response is so inefficient and awkward and wonderful. It is clumsy and full of love. I can tell. Then you look down and pause before saying the most deranged thing I’ve ever heard.

“But then the other way to look at it was - I would never have met her if I hadn’t had this problem.”

What kind of fucked up catch-22 is that? This is the stuff people study. It is Shakespearean - the predicament you’ve found yourself in. In literature it is called hamartia, in life it is called Trouble. Big Trouble. Capital T. The more I think about it the more I realise how profound your life’s conundrum is. So I am writing to you today because, if you don’t mind, I’d like to know if it is worth it.

Is love worth it?

Are six good years on the run worth forty less-good ones?

Do you sometimes think that you might have imported billions of dollars worth of cocaine just so that you could be with this shawty, if only for a short time?

What use is nostalgia? Did you imagine a future with her and do you feel robbed of it? Is love enough, even when it seems like you have to pay for it?

What the fuck are we meant to do, Mickey? Play it safe and turn ourselves in?

Mickey, is love worth getting into Big Trouble?

I’m of the firm belief that there is no better person on earth to ask. Like I said, the humanities can’t be trusted on the matter. What the fuck does a philosopher know about risk and atonement? They deal only in hypotheticals and aren’t from the Keys. They don’t know what it is like to get away with anything. They don’t know what it is like to tow the coastguard back to shore with a boat literally bricked up to the helm. They haven’t ever ejected themselves from a brand new loaded plane mid-flight. You found out you had ‘been made’ so you pointed the Cessna Conquest east, turned the autopilot on, and jumped out. it kept flying, fated to crash and drown when it ran out of petrol.

You called this “giving it to the Bermuda triangle.”

I’d like to note that when I found out about this stunt I got the feeling that you might also like throwing trollies off bridges.

I think you and I are the same, Mickey. We are trying to get things right. We are people who make sense. We think in terms of cause and effect. Unfortunately, this love stuff makes no sense at all.

People like you and I feel deserving of all our wins and losses - or at the very least we suspect them before they arrive. I’m paranoid. You are pedantic. You pre-empted and meticulously calculated every possible outcome and risk factor before each delivery.

And still, I bet you did not see her coming.

One of the conquistadors involved in Florida’s colonisation, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, said, “we went there to serve God, and also to get rich.” It sounds like Florida has since fulfilled this prophecy a million times over. In this sense, you have spent a lifetime devoted to a distinctly Floridian interest. It checks out that once you left Florida, Love found you. God and Money weren’t in the way. Many would think that all the drug stuff was the most high-stakes part of your life, but the romantic in me would wager that nothing got your heart rate up quite like the woman, and the imminent threat of her loss. There is something to be said about the tricks that get played on us I’m just not quite sure what it is yet. it has something to do with what you meant when you said, "I would never have met her if I hadn’t had this problem.”

Yeah, only you can answer the question of love. You are Mickey Munday; Magic City’s* Icarus. With your long blonde mullet, talking about logistics in a hangar with a fleet of planes behind you. You served the god of altitude and velocity. That is a risky God. You flew too close to the sun in your cocaine plane, and it melted your wings and you crash-landed into government custody for nine years and then another eighteen.

I recently discovered velocity and I love it. I get why you always describe smuggling as “fun” to the shock and horror of baiting journalists. If you go fast enough, it is hard to stand going slow. It is part of the sickness. I first got sick when I flew around an island chain on a jetski while under the influence of acid made by a Norwegian scientist. It was world-ending. Up until then, I had been happy living passively, writing and reading. But going that fast and feeling that free recalibrated something in me. Panic gave me wings.

Now I can barely write- only to strange men in prison. Now I just want to serve a risky god and get rich. I want to give something that isn’t a trolley to the Bermuda Triangle. Something bigger. Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed I must go fast now.

I hope this makes sense. If you don’t get it I don’t think anyone else will. I’m pretty confident you will get it. You are known for saying “The only legal way to get high is to fly a plane.”

I also hope this message reaches you. It was difficult finding out where you are incarcerated I assumed America was more liberal with that kind of sensitive information. For what it is worth I feel like society is missing out as long as you are not participating in it. What are some of the things you are looking forward to doing as a free man in 2027?

My Man Mickey Munday with the Mullet, Magic City’s Icarus, I need to know about the woman and the love. I have so many questions. Which swamp? Did you try to find her when you got out? Why couldn’t she wait?

I’ve thought about fugitive love, and also love more generally. I’ve thought about overdosing or leaving for the tropics without a trace. When I’m in the shower I dream of the jungle at night. I dream of pursuing terrible things in beautiful places. Do you do this too?

Is it worth it?

If you could tell me this it would maybe change my life.

Talk soon,

Ernie

*Magic City = Miami